Any gastro-historians out there? This post is about a favorite component of Ancient Roman cooking that likely was as pervasive as kimchee in modern Korean cuisine, and I am talking about garum, a sauce and made out of decaying, briny fish. The picture you see here is of a garum-producing factory in the Ancient city of Baelo Claudia in southern Spain.
Garum had been made by the Ancient Greeks as well, but the Romans cottoned to it by the first century. The poet Manilius (c 20-30 CE) discusses how it was made, with the blood of fish mixed with the viscera and loads of salt to make a condiment. By fermenting the fish in big vats, he tells us that “their inward parts melt and issue forth a stream of decomposition.” Yum!
Other accounts tell of mixing the stewing fish with wine and spices — but it was the specific measure of salt mixed with the decaying fish enzymes that caused the garum to ferment rather than rot. The Iberian peninsula was the most important producer of garum in the Empire, although any seacoast where both fish and salt were in supply could make a good manufacturing locale.
Despite how popular it was, Romans admitted to garum’s smelly nature. The satirist Martial makes fun of young women who eat too much of the fetid stuff, and the philosopher Seneca claimed that garum, “the costly extract of poisonous fish, burns up the stomach with its salted putrefaction.”
The tradition of making garum continued into the Middle Ages, with sources continuing to comment on how disgusting it smelled even as they consumed it. A fourteenth-century law forbid garum production within a third of a mile of a town or village. One tenth-century northern Italian visitor to the Byzantine court complained of “a disgusting and foul meal,” which included “exceedingly bad fish liquor.”
Culinary historians in Spain have recently attempted to reproduce the ancient recipe using a chemical analysis of garum remnants that survived the volcano eruption of Pompeii in 79 CE. One of their products is called “Flor de Garum” and is supposed to have an umami flavor. You can actually buy it online!
Sources: Smithsonian Magazine, “Culinary detectives try to recover the formula for a deliciously fishy Roman condiment” Taras Grescoe, Nov 2021. Liutprand of Cremona, Ernest Henderson, Select Historical Documents of the Middle Ages (London: George Bell, 1910), pp 440;477, Internet Medieval Sourcebook
